29th December – Finding a Vision

Madurai was our next stop. Madurai, the temple town of the south India, is home to 2500 year old Meenakshi temple. As our yatra wasn’t a leisure trip but an entrepreneurial one, we headed directly to the yatra’s next social enterprise; Aravind Eye care. As the bus made its way through the roads of Tamil Nadu, I noticed that the walls on the sides of the pavement were either painted with ‘larger than life’ political figures or plastered with huge Tamil movie posters.

Story of Aravind Eye Care – Giving Vision to the Bottom of the Pyramid
“Intelligence and capability are not enough, there must be a joy of doing something beautiful” –the philosophy with which late Dr. G. Venkataswamy the founded of Aravind Eye Care. After Dr. V’s retirement from the army at the age of 58, he thought he still had much more to do with his life. Thus, Aravind Eye care was born with only 11 beds in 1978. “Today, Aravind Eye Care has five eye hospitals and 33 primary eye care centres, which cater to 70% of Tamil Nadu’s, 8% of our country's and 3% of the world’s eye patients,” Dr Arvind from Aravind Eye Care.

But this is not just a success story. The business model it’s run on is what is striking and sets it apart from any other eye care hospital in the world. World statistics show that 80% of the blindnesses are curable. Aravind Eye Care was started with a vision to end needless blindness. Dr. V observed that the blind in the rural and poorer parts of Tamil Nadu lost vision in the later part of their lives due to their inaccessibility to Cataract treatment. He started catering to the needs of that segment of the market where healthcare had never reached. And, the hospital doesn’t charge the poor at all!! 60% of the cataract operations performed in the hospital are free of cost. The hospital works on the cross subsidy model. 40% of the patients, who can afford the treatment, pay, and the rest don’t. A paid patient takes care of himself and one more patient in addition to providing a little surplus to the hospital.

Surprised? Not much? Okay, I’ll add one more fact that makes Aravind Eye Care different. The patients don’t come to the hospital to be treated. The hospital goes out to them. The eye care centres moves from one village to another, to set up rural eye camps which select people who need treatment. About 30 camps are conducted in a week. These camps reach out to almost 6, 76, 000 villagers every year! These villagers are then picked up by hospital and taken to the hospital for the treatment. They are transported back into their villages in two days after the operation. All of this is free of cost. Still, Aravind Eye Care has three times returns on investment!

You would be wondering how this is possible. Aravind Eye Care’s workforce constitutes of 90% women. Most of these women are only high school pass who have been trained by Aravind Eye Care in eye healthcare. These are the women who run eye camps in villages and also work in the hospital. Only the surgery is taken care of by the doctors. “Aravind can work without doctors but not without mid level workers,” Dr. Arvind stated in the presentation. Aravind Eye Care trains about 300+ high school girls and recruits them into the hospital chain. So, cheap but effective labour is the mantra!

When Dr. V started this hospital, he wanted to replicate the McDonalds franchise model i.e. Mass production, consistent good quality and a self sustaining model. And that’s exactly what he has done, only at a much lower cost!

27th December – Feeling the Pulse of the Yatra Part II

Story of Paul and Sabriye – “Dream Big”

A small German girl lost her eyesight at the age of 12. She waited for darkness to come but it never did. Instead her life became more colourful. “Blindness made me curious, I tried finding new ways to do things” she shared. As a growing child, she too had dreams… to travel the world and learn new languages. But society wouldn’t let her chase her dreams so she ventured out alone. After Red Cross disagreed to take her to Tibet, she left for the country alone.

Sabriye along with her partner Paul, opened the first school for the blind in Tibet in 1997. But before Paul joined in, Sabriye had roamed Tibet and witnessed the most appalling social customs; of keeping blind children locked in dark rooms, of tying them up to furniture so they can’t move out of the home! As Sabriye spoke to Tibetans, she found out that locals thought of blindness as a curse to the family. So as to save the family name, they hid the children inside the cellars and rooms. That’s when Sabriye decided to open a school for blind children in Tibet. Not only to make them self reliant but also to give them a sense of dignity. I can still hear her voice echoing in the brick hall in which we were sitting, “I am blind, SO WHAT?!” She wanted to give them a feeling of pride and confidence. To make them believe that they are not a burden to the society and their family, they are as capable as anyone else is.

To give her dream shape, she directly approached the Chinese government office requesting for some money. And guess what? Her broken Chinese and belief in her dream got her the money! Sabriye met Paul in Tibet. She smiled and said, “He is my DREAM partner.” Paul was backpacker in Tibet when he met Sabriye and heard of her dream. He quit his job to join her. Sabriye shared, “He is the only person I met who didn’t laugh on my dream.” Together they taught and trained blind children in Tibet. Today, after 12 years of setting up the school, they have managed to change the attitude of Tibetans towards blind children. But more than that, they have changed the attitude of the blind towards themselves. Sabriye shared a story of a small boy who was being mocked by a few teens on the road. The kid turned to them and said, “I can read and write, can you?” – This shut the teens up! Paul & Sabriye left the school some years back to migrate to India. “Success is there when we are not needed anymore,” Sabriye declared. They have left it to be run by blind themselves.

In India, Paul and Sabriye run the International Institute of Social Entrepreneurs. They train students in skilled based production; like weaving, cheese making, carpentry etc to make them self reliant and independent. They select students from all over the world, ranging from places like war zones, under developed countries, the discriminated blacks and the blind. The selection criterion is simple. They should have the zeal in them to make the wrong into right. “It’s a dream factory,” in Paul’s words.

The audience was captivated. The power, energy and force in Sabriye’s voice held us. She was proud of herself and her dreams. She said, “You don’t need vision but A VISION.” Looking at her I felt, nothing is impossible to achieve, no dream is too big to come true. What you need is just the determination and belief in yourself and your dream. Everything else can be taken care of.